


stable ground

by bloodsweatspit



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26329036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodsweatspit/pseuds/bloodsweatspit
Summary: a story about lachlan shelton, donair (obliquely), loss, & simon “comet” haley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	stable ground

when the water came to halifax, it came fast. lachlan hadn’t been up on the news for a few weeks - out at sea for a job, & then back into town only a couple days, still spending most of his time in the deep sleep he could only get on solid ground - when the first set of levees broke. he was never in immediate danger; he liked staying out of the city proper, distant enough out that he could sleep with the windows open to let in the smells of rain and earth. he had enough time to gather his few possessions and depart for higher ground.

but he hadn’t known it was coming. he thinks sometimes about what he might have done differently if he knew.

would he have stayed in town instead of going out on another lonely oil tanker expedition to the end of the horizon? would he have tried to call someone, anyone at all, and say _i’m sorry_ or _i still miss you_ or _please, before every place we ever kissed each other is underwater - please, before the buildings are riddled with coral and thick with algae, before there’s nowhere i can even go to remember_ \- would he even have tried?

maybe. but probably he would have still been there, in his quiet simple kitchen in his cabin in the woods. slicing garlic. chopping onions. 

cooking, whether at home or at work, always made him feel like a monk: cut wood, carry water. rub fresh oregano between your fingertips. soak dried beans overnight. wash dishes. keep an eye on the pot. toast coriander seeds and grind them fine. don’t think about land. wash dishes. don’t think about backaches. whisk until the emulsion comes together. grate frozen ginger on a microplane. don’t think about stable ground, the haloes around streetlights when drunk at 2am, the warmth of another person’s body. let the meat rest before serving. when the oil shimmers, it’s hot enough. wash dishes. don’t think

for a long time he would not even attempt to make certain dishes. the flavors would come to him in dreams - sumac, lemon, condensed milk - and he would wake hungry but refuse to consume anything except ice water for hours. he would stand in the small kitchen trying elaborate new recipes and techniques, subsisting on trimmed scraps until dinner. bought the flench laundry cookbook and plowed his way through the whole thing. made his own vietnamese style fish sauce.

when he heard the city was putting together an ILB team he didn’t think much of it. ignoring the outside world entirely was routine instead of unique by then. (he certainly didn’t know one of their pitchers was rumored to be the cause of the flooding in the first damn place.) when comet haley showed up at lachlan’s door one brisk april morning, looking exactly the same as they had in college & tossing a blaseball in one hand, lachlan assumed it was just an exercise in nostalgia.

neither of them even touched a bat that first day - just made the same stumbling small talk of any old friends reuniting, each of them picking their way around certain subjects (lachlan: family, friends; comet: where they’d been between college & about ten years back). they drank spruce beers as they talked and then, in the late afternoon sun, took turns fumbling pitches at each other. lachlan watched comet run joyous laps around the yard whenever they managed to catch the ball, incandescent in the sunset’s rays.

when lachlan opened the door a couple weeks later to find comet back again, he even took that in stride. it wasn’t until comet made some offhand remark about home games and their next scheduled stop in town that lachlan understood: comet intended to _keep_ coming back. not just this one time, but again in the future. the realization crashed into his chest like someone had hauled a sack of potatoes at him unexpectedly. if he’d been given warning - if comet had explicitly said “i’d like us to be close again” - he’d have let it fall to the ground. but comet breezed on, chattering about an impending trip to baltimore, and lachlan found himself talking about a crab house that an old sailor once told him was the best on the east coast. he caught the weight of the realization, staggered back to accommodate it, and moved forward - all on pure reflex. something deep within him still remembered other humans. still remembered how to connect with them.

when comet came back the next time, lachlan hesitantly mentioned that he probably still had his old bat somewhere. you know. if comet felt like getting some extra batting practice in.

comet was kind enough not to say that they got quite enough practice with the team.

that day they talked more about college as they played - the game they’d invented with their freshman dormmates, a hybrid of blaseball and tag designed for as few as two - how they used to chase each other across the campus, young and golden and happy to be inside their bodies. they didn’t use those words, of course; but every word dripped with the honey of nostalgia, and its taste was thick in the air between them. lachlan remembered how easily he used to fall asleep back then. as he remembered, and as he stretched his muscles, his body warmed. the muscles loosened without going slack. when he swung at one of comet’s pitches and connected solidly, sending the ball arcing into the distant woods, comet beamed. “if i didn’t know better, i’d think you were the one who went to the big league.”

it felt like things went that way for forever - lachlan still focused on his cooking, albeit with the radio on whenever the talkers were playing - but it was only a few weeks before the season drew to a close. lachlan was listening when the talkers qualified for the postseason, kneading a ball of brioche dough. his hands were greasy with butter. he smiled at the sound of blubbery cheers from inside the stadium, tinny through the cheap radio speakers. he almost didn’t get one hand clean in time to pick up the phone when it rang. a different man might have panicked hearing the ringing so late at night - imagined all kinds of terrible news on the other end - but lachlan knew no one else would be calling.

“congratulations.”

“lachlan!” comet was laughing, giddy, the roar of the stadium fuzzy behind their voice. “we _did_ it, we really did it, we - “ a pause as comet turned to speak with someone else - “listen, you’ve gotta come out with us! the whole team is going for drinks, we won’t have to pay for one tonight, hahah - “ another break, then, before lachlan could get a single word in, “i’ll text you where to meet me!”

comet hung up before lachlan had a chance to hesitate. he looked down at the dough. it needed to chill in the fridge before he shaped it and baked the loaf anyway - he wouldn’t waste anything by stepping away now. he couldn’t think of a single reason _not_ to (except for the blinking-neon-obvious one that he simply did not consciously face.) he found himself changing into a clean shirt, floating outside into the warm night, climbing onto his bicycle and sailing away.

the bar that comet had texted him wasn’t far from the old haunts - on a spit of raised land that had barely made it through the floods, surrounded by a couple blocks of submerged apartments and restaurants. when lachlan arrived at the entrance to the new footbridge to the island, he chained his bike to the rack with a forced studiousness, spinning the combination wheels for far longer than necessary. he tried to focus on their knobbled texture as an anchor to reality. he imagined that, if he focused enough, he could read the secret message encoded in its braille.

as he crossed the bridge, he looked at the wooden beams. their bright pale hue in the moonlight. the stubbly cut edges that had not yet worn away with time. he did not look at the sunken street he crossed over. he did not look back at the span of the coastline, its half-collapsed skeletons of buildings. he did not look at the ghosts he passed over: the apartment they shared, the restaurant, the bus stop where they said goodbye.

at the halfway point of the bridge, he looked up and forward. comet was waiting at the end of the bridge. lachlan could hear the crowd at the pub - from the volume alone he knew the team must be there already, surrounded by strangers buying drinks. he braced himself for the raucous strangers. the giddy players that comet would introduce him to.

his internal compass set itself by comet as if they were the north star. he walked forward. he did not look back.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Season 8, Day 44](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27483613) by [Absotively](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Absotively/pseuds/Absotively)




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